


Consequences

by My_Write_Life



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek is a Good Dad, Derek tries his best, F/M, Peter is a dick, mentioned sterek - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25982455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Write_Life/pseuds/My_Write_Life
Summary: Derek leaves Beacon Hills for good and decides to give his old girlfriend a call to explain to her all the reasons why he’s been gone for nine years. What he never expected was for life to move on without him with unexpected consequences.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Reader, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	1. Rowan

**Author's Note:**

> My sister made this request. I’d have never written Character/Reader anything but well, I owed her one.

Rowan Emery loves her daughter. She loves her little Lola to bits, from the moment she came squalling out into the world, red faced and flailing, Rowan knew nothing else but Lola Jeanne and she was never lonely again. Sometimes she would lay awake when Lola was put to bed at night, stare out the window at the city landscape, listen to the bustle of the city below and she would wonder if Derek ever thought about her. He didn’t know, the thing is, he didn’t know because he couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone, couldn’t be bothered to say goodbye to begin with and now its been nine years and Lola has his dark black straight hair, his beguiling hazel eyes and his big teeth and looked just like his sister.

She wondered if they’d planned it, Rowan thinks about that October of 2011 when Laura packed a bag and said she’d be back soon and then never came back. Rowan also remembers how Derek, two weeks later was just gone, the apartment cold and lonely, a small duffle from the closet gone along with Derek’s father’s leather jacket. No note, not a whisper. Nothing.

Rowan remembers calling him, how sometimes it would ring four and go to voicemail before it would ring two and then, suddenly, her number was blocked and she was a mess because she was pregnant and Derek was gone and had no idea. She hadn’t even known where Derek and Laura had disappeared to, she had no way of finding them. It’s not like they had facebook or even an e-mail, they lived like they were on the run and then...then the months passed and Rowan got bigger and bigger and sadder and sadder. When Lola came it was like life was breathed back into her, Rowan was happy.

She moved out of the apartment with Lola’s things and some of her own. She knew that Derek and Laura couldn’t be dead, the apartment was still being paid for and no matter how much she begged the landlord all she would do is shake her head and tell Rowan that she was better off.

’A man who can just leave,’ She said lightly touching Lola’s cheek. ‘You can do better than that. Do better than wait for a man who wont come.’

Missus Wheeler had been right, in the end, she’d been so right when movers came to take Derek’s things like his books and Laura’s bedroom furniture. They’d left her, Laura and Derek had left her and hadn’t the courage to even tell her that she was dumped. Laura had been her friend, it hurt but Derek...

Derek was the father of her child, little Lola Jeanne didn’t have even a chance to know him thats how much of a coward he was, running away and tucking tail.

Fuck him, Lola was better off.

Eight year old Lola Jeanne never asked about her father. Rowan’s baby was content with just Mama and Aunt Jennie and their hound dog Hank. Leaving New York for Malory was the best thing that Rowan could have done for her little girl. The city was a great place to raise children but Lola had been born with unsteady legs, the kind that, when they found purchase would never stop running and Rowan knew that she needed to take Lola back home.

Derek asked her once, when their relationship was new, why she’d ever left Malory. The south, he’d said, didn’t she miss it? And the answer was yes, yes she missed it, she missed the chirping birds in the early morning and the chirping bugs the rest of the live long day. She missed the damp heat and the sour stench of freshly mowed lawns and the whisper of leaves when the hot wind blew just a bit too hard. Rowan had missed home the moment she left it and was glad, now, that she’d come home.

Her mother hadn’t been happy to see her twenty four year old daughter now a single mother come back home and had said, before anything else first, _you have one week, Ro. One week and then you gotta go._

That was fine, Rowan hadn’t wanted to stay with her mother any longer than she had to and in a small town like Malory it seemed like everyone seemed to know just what was going on and what Rowan and baby Lola Jeanne needed. Home.

Missus August was kind and lived on a small farm in an old white and green farmhouse in the outskirts of Malory. She had a big ol’ hound dog named after her dead husband, Hank, and the slobbery monster was sweeter than anything. Toothless too. Missus August asked Rowan one Sunday morning right before going into St. Paul’s Church, if Rowan and Lola might want to move into her big old house. _Too much just for me and Hank. Plenty of room. You think on it a while._

Rowan remembers Missus August’s farm when she was young, remembers the orange trees and Mister Hank whittling away sitting in an old rocker on his expansive porch, remembers the homemade ice cream melting too fast to get all into her mouth during the summers and Hank the dog, still with most of his teeth, wheezing away like he was laughing and Rowan says yes, right there on the steps of St. Paul’s, Rowan says yes.

Rowan and Lola have been living in Missus August’s-Aunt _Jennie’s_ farm for Lola’s entire life. Neither of them ever want to leave.

”Rowan, sweetheart, someones on the line for you.” Theres a knock on the door and it opens just an inch. “Some man, says its important.”

”Jesus, it’s gotta be Mullaby. I hate Mullaby.” Rowan climbs out of bed and ignores Lola giggle at her side completely hidden under the patchwork throw cover.

“Which Mullaby?” Aunt Jennie gives Rowan’s cheek a pink.

”All of them.” Rowan says and laughs when Aunt Jennie laugh behind her. It’s Saturday, 6AM and Rowan knows, because of course, that only a Mullaby would call anyone before the sun was completely out on a Saturday morning.

Sundays too. That was last week when Lisa Mullaby called and complained to Rowan about her housekeeper getting old and begging Rowan to come in and give her kitchen a good scrub down. Extra cash, of course, more than she gives her during the Holidays when Rowan usually works for the Mullaby’s.

Damn rude bastards. It hadn’t even been much more than her regular rate and that kitchen had been particularly atrocious when Rowan had gotten there, her entire Sunday screwed.

She skips down the stairs and hops over Hank slumbering at the bottom landing and calling the mangey mutt a bastard before she’s at the landline sitting by the front door. The old thing is discolored yellow white and had been new in the seventies but works well, Aunt Jennie says, no need to get another.

’Maybe a cell phone?’ Rowan asks herself and takes the phone, false cheery tone in case its one of the more ornery ones. “Rowan Emery speaking.”

”Ro.” The voice says and Rowan would give anything for any of the Mullaby’s to be on the other line right now, anything but hear that familiar distant voice and feel bile rise up her throat. 

“Derek..? How did you find me?”

”Its good to hear you, Ro.”


	2. Rowan

Rowan braids Lola’s long dark hair in a plait that reaches mid back. She fixes her overalls and ties her shoes and makes sure that her baby doesn’t choke on her breakfast as she eats too much too fast before its time to grab her hat and race off with Aunt Jennie into town. Saturdays are usually good days. Sundays are good days too but Saturdays? Saturdays are meant for sleeping in and being lazy, are for big breakfasts, the kind that theres no time for during the work week or on Sundays when you’re rushing out of the house trying to make it to church on time.

This Saturday. It’s August 18, sixteen days after her baby’s eighth birthday and Rowan’s life has turned on its head.

Derek Hale. Derek Hale with his strangely boyish voice, his big teeth and beguiling eyes, had called. She tries to remember more of him and can’t, not in the way that makes him real. Theres something so distinctly far away about him, she can see his general shape in her minds eye and knows that Lola takes after him and his sister but she can’t put him together. Like he’s a puzzle thats come apart and some of the more jagged pieces have been lost. Her head aches and her heart is heavy and Lola is talking through her food a mile a minute.

”Lola Jeanne Emery, what has your mama told you about talking with a full mouth?” Aunt Jennie says, tapping the nine year old’s head lightly with a wooden spoon.

“Not to?”

”Thats right.” Aunt Jennie smiles and then gives Rowan a look like she knows something is the matter but can’t quite put her finger on it.

It’s not like Rowan is making it hard, she looks sour and depressed at the table. The only one who doesn’t know is Lola and Lola is just eight and unaware that anything at anytime ever could possibly be wrong.

”Rowan, you want anything from town?” Aunt Jennie is taking Lola’s empty plate to the sink and Lola is impatiently waiting at the back door with Hank already wearing his harness and collar.

”No. No I’m fine.”

”That old Mullaby got you like this?” Aunt Jennie ties her red hair back in a twist and gives her a wink. “It was George wasn't it? Only George can make you look depressed.”

”Usually,” Rowan says and forces out a grin. “Have you seen that mans house? You’d think with all that money he could afford to have a maid all week long. I’m fine. I promise.”

”He’s cheap.” Aunt Jennie says taking Hanks leash in hand, car keys jangling in the pocket of her cardigan. “Well, Lola and I will be out for the day. You sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine. I promise.” She grins big as Lola gives her a quick kiss goodbye and then she’s alone in the kitchen staring into her empty mug, miserable as shes ever been.

That bastard. How dare he?

Nine years, he’d been gone nine whole years, a lifetime away and now he wants to clear the air, wants to say that he’s sorry for leaving telling her what he should have said nine years ago. That Laura was dead.

Dead.

Well, at least one of the Hale’s hadn’t abandoned her, she thought, that Laura had really meant it when she said she would see her later but the later never came, not because Laura decided to stay away but because someone had made her stay away forever. 

She wonders if they caught the person who did it and that maybe thats why Derek had been gone. It was an excuse, for a month or a few weeks maybe she could have overlooked it but nine years? Nine years no phone call. Nine years of paying for an empty apartment. Nine years without one word not a goodbye not an I’m sorry. Nothing at all.

’Ro, it’s good to hear you.’

’How did you find me? What do you want?’

He went back to a dusty apartment. Rowan had draped everything, left it all behind when she took her things and had just left. He hadn’t thought that she would be gone, he’d said, he hadn’t thought that she would leave a place that she loved but then she’d cut him off and said she never loved that cramped apartment she loved the people in it and left because the people in it had abandoned her.

’You thought, what, that I was gonna wait for you?’

’No. Maybe.’

’What do you want Derek?’

’You need to know what happened.’

And then he told her that Laura had died nine years ago and thats why he left. Back to their hometown to look for her and finding nothing but her in literal pieces. Rowan’s heart bled for them both, Laura was a good woman. She was loud and obnoxious. Opinionated, nosey and a terrible gossip and now she was just _gone._

Gone gone. Not just left, not just having run away. She was dead and Derek had found her and then he stayed. He stayed. The difference between Laura and Derek was that Laura was always going to come back but Derek had stayed away.

Nine years, an entire little lifetime passed him by and Rowan had been unable to say anything, it was never a secret, Derek had never given her the opportunity to tell him just like he’d never given Lola the opportunity to know him. He was all alone in the world and wasn’t that just sad? He was all alone. What a stupid man.

’I’m sorry for your loss.’

’Thank you. I’m sorry about leaving you the way that I did.’

’You did what you had to do. I don’t blame you for leaving in the beginning or staying away at the beginning. But damn you if you ask me to forgive you for staying gone. Don't you dare.’

’I’m not asking you to forgive me for that.’

’Aren’t you?’

In a way. She knew him well enough or at least she thought that she had known him but then Derek had done something that she never thought he would do, he stayed gone.

’Derek there’s something that I have to tell you.’

’Okay.’

She had taken a deep breath, shaky. 

‘Lola Jeanne,’ she started. ‘Pretty name, isn’t it?’

’It is.’ There was a question in his voice, he couldn’t know what she was saying until she said it.

’You left on October 27th. We had one last night on the 26th and then you left on the 27th. I thought you’d be back I waited and waited and three weeks later you weren’t back and then I called and called and two weeks after that you blocked my number,’

’I’m sorry.’

’Seven pounds, eight ounces. Her hair was so thick and curly but black and she was so loud.’

’Rowan?’

Its hard, she thought at that moment she could leave it at that and let him figure it out, that would be cruel but then she thought, this man was capable of a great many stupidities that it would be irresponsible not to come right out with it no matter how hard.

Lola wasn’t a secret. Lola was bright and beautiful and she was Derek’s daughter.

’Your daughters name is Lola Jeanne. Her birthday is August 2nd. She just turned eight. She was seven pounds and eight ounces and screamed like a banshee when she was born and didn’t stop till they put her on my chest. Do with that what you will.’

She hung up.


	3. Derek

“Daughter?” Peter sounds pitched, staring at the back of Derek’s head and he’s glad that he’s already sat on Derek’s velvet sofa. “You have a daughter?”

”Y-you,”

”I didn’t leave.” Peter says as Derek crushes the phone in his hand and he watches as the pieces and blood fall to the concrete floor. Derek is...not infuriated he’s devastated and hurting. 

Derek has a child. He has missed everything. 40 weeks of pregnancy with his lover, the birth, his child’s first breath. Every first. Peter would feel sorrier for him if the thought didn’t make him so giddy, that Derek lost years of something precious because he made a stupid decision the way that Peter lost years and loved ones because _Derek_ made a stupid decision.

And thats what it all comes down to, Derek being stupid and doing something stupid and ruining everything for himself. Had Derek simply gone back to New York after he’d killed him then he would have been back perhaps even before the mother had even known she was pregnant. That woman and child would have been all the pack that Derek would ever need and he would have lived blissfully with his family.

But Peter’s nephew is stupid and had wanted to stay and for what? For McCall to betray him, for his betas to die, for Cora to return and then part ways as soon as they’d reached Peru? Derek was all alone and while he made his many many terrible decisions that guaranteed loneliness that child in wherever she was had thrived for years without him.

Peter had planned on killing Derek all along but this...this worked out beautifully, this hurt, the years Derek would never get back and the hatred that woman held for him, for leaving her all to herself with nothing but an empty apartment where even the ghosts wouldn’t keep her company.

”Eight years old.” Peter starts. “I wonder if she has your eyes.”

”Leave.”

”No.”

”No?”

Its not like Derek hadn’t known that Peter would end his revenge with him. He knew Peter best had always known. Now that Kate was dead, really dead this time then there was nothing holding Peter back from finishing the job. 

But now Derek could feel Peter’s giddy excitement and it seemed so much worse than dying and maybe it was, this pain. Derek had left someone he cared about greatly, someone who loved him and trusted him and had been there with him when it was hard in the beginning. Someone he lived with and shared almost everything with. Laura had even been close to letting her in on what they were, Laura’s friend who Derek had fallen in love with.

And they had a kid. A little girl with black hair, thats what Rowan had said wasn’t it? Black hair, like Derek. He can’t imagine a face to the girl but he sees black hair, different from Rowans flyaway brown curls. He wonders who she looks more like, if she takes after Rowan or him. If he looked at her would he see Laura and his mother in her features or Rowan’s mother?

”Are you going to them? I wouldn’t imagine that it would be a good idea. I mean, what if this woman is married?” Peter started. “Then that girl already has a father, right?”

”I...if Rowan were married then she would have never told me about...her.”

”Lola Jeanne...how very...” Peter laughs a bit after having stressed Jeanne into a heavy _Zhahn_. “She’s not French is she? You said she was southern. She probably meant Gene and incorrectly spelled it.”

”Stop that.”

”What?” Peter holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I was just noting. Jeanne is a little sophisticated to follow behind Lola.” He says and then starts again. “Lola, Lola, Lo-La.” He sing songs. “Who on earth would name their child Lola in this day and age? I suppose its better than something else. Whats more southern? Eddie May? Joy Lee? Luanne?” He laughs.

”Its a good name.” Derek says. “Lola. It was her sisters name.”

”Oh? A namesake for the dead?”

”Yes.”

”So what was it that took her?”

”I never asked- _why_ are you still here?”

”To gloat,” Peter claps once and then stands up. He feels lighter and could care less what happens now. Derek is in agony but it wont stay that way forever and while Peter had wanted to kill him he still loved the little savage. This moment his revenge is met and now there would be nothing more. Peter could move on.

He makes it to the large sliding door and says;

”Go and see her. Go and see your Lola Jeanne and make something of it.” 

“What?”

”That child is a Hale.” Peter says. “I’d bet with your luck that your child is a wolf. You wouldn’t want her to kill her mother on her first full moon would you?”

”Thats not for years now. Puberty, remember?”

”Remember Laura? She started at nine years old.”

And with that Peter is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter is a dick. And also mean. BTW Southerners please dont be offended. I’m Southern and I offended myself.  
> Also, Jeanne (English) pronounced Jean. Jeanne (French) pronounced Zhahn.


	4. Derek

Derek packs up the loft for the last time. He leaves the furniture behind, Laura’s furniture, and decides that its time. Scott is coming back to Beacon Hills, Derek had left him a text, telling Scott that he could have the loft. When Scott called to ask him why and Derek had told him that it was time to move on. Derek was leaving and leaving for good.

’Why?’ Scott had asked over the phone, Derek could hear the heavy rain on the other line. ‘I thought you wanted to stay in your territory.’

’Somethings happened. I can’t. I would love to stay but I can’t.’

’Something bad?’

Derek has never been close to Scott, not the kind of close where Derek would tell Scott his secrets but Rowan and Lola seemed to big to keep to himself, not dangerous, not bad just bigger. Derek was abandoning his territory for them and leaving it to Scott. Scott had a right to know.

So he tells him everything.

’You have a kid.’

’I have a kid.’

Derek’s not looking forward to the thirty seven hour drive he has ahead of him but at the same time he is. He knows where Rowan is, he shouldn’t, knows that its a breech in privacy and wrong to have called her mother to ask but Barbra had sneered over the phone and told him to take responsibility and at the time Derek hadn’t known what she meant when he asked for the number, confused when she’d given him that and an address but now he knows.

He knows.

He gets random texts that he doesn’t check. Knows that they’re from the pack if they could all be _called_ that. Scott has his wife, some girl Derek had only heard about but never met and she seems to be all the pack the young alpha needs, Lydia and Jackson had gotten back together and were far away and hadn’t made so much a peep in years apart from a random text every now and then and holiday cards twice a year. Malia had all but vanished once she tossed her cap and gown, she and her human father put the house in the woods up for sale and left for good.

The kids, well, not kids anymore Liam and his friends were in college and Liam was the only one to keep a steady contact with Derek apart from Stiles. It was refreshing, that someone cared enough to keep in contact and was genuinely happy to hear from him.

Stiles was...well Stiles was a different all together feeling, they’d tried to become a _them_ when Stiles had graduated from college but the distance and growing responsibilities had made their attempted relationship end in bittersweet goodbyes.

That one still stung.

Those _two_ still stung. Stiles and Rowan, Rowan and Stiles. They were in a category all their own. While Paige was bittersweet loss, Jennifer was what might have been and Kate had been the mistake, Rowan and Stiles were the Ones That Got Away.

Derek, with all of his stubbornness had a way of ruining everything good. He didn’t bend, he didn’t compromise and now he was all alone.

Had Derek gone back to New York after killing Peter then he would have married Rowan. Lola would not have grown up without him and he was sure she would not have been an only child.

If Derek had just left the territory and had gone to Georgia to be with Stiles they would be together now. Married? Maybe. Happy? Most definitely.

Derek just has a way of ruining everything.

But now? Now Derek was determined to make it right. Rowan would never forgive him, he had no hope of starting again and with everything that had happened in the last nine years he didn’t think it was even possible. He wasn’t the same person he was before, he was more open and a little more honest but he’d still been the man to leave her. Rowan wouldn’t care about the whys and the hows and the reasons he needed to leave and stay gone and honestly Derek wasn’t so sure he believed it himself. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do but in the end, if he really thought about it, he left and stayed gone because it was easier than being _that guy._

He remembers falling in love with Rowan and wanting to constantly be with her, he remembers waking up to her and falling into bed with her and he remembers being terrified when he realized that he loved her. Really loved her. The last woman he had loved had murdered his family and the first woman he loved died in his arms.

Laura had wanted to tell her the truth, Rowan was her friend and Derek was in love with her and at that point it was only right to let her know just who she was living and sleeping with. Rowan wouldn’t have reacted badly but Derek had been so convinced that she would betray him that he’d been looking for an out. Breaking his own heart was one thing, he was used to it but the possibility of being betrayed by love? He couldn’t do it again. When Laura died he’d gone and when it came time to kill Peter he did it. 

For a moment he thought of going back to New York to Rowan but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t trust her enough with his heart he had thought that she would leave and who knows what would happen to her if she stayed so Derek never went back.

He’d been so stupid. So very stupid.

Sure there had been others, he’d been with Jennifer and had Jennifer been genuine he would have stayed happy but the haze of magic had muddled him and she’d never been real. Braeden was fun, she was kind in her own way, tough and she’d taught him how to defend himself when he’d been human for that short while and the sex was dynamic. Braeden cared about him, genuinely and she was never dishonest with him.

They were for the moment, she never wanted to settle down and that seemed like all Derek wanted to do so she ended it after six months after the Kate ordeal and that was that. They still spoke, she dropped a line sometimes dropping by Beacon Hills and tumbling into bed with him but it was never odd. They were friends with a dash of more and there had been no hard feelings when he and Stiles had started. 

She’d politely taken the sofa and tried her best to persuade him to go to Georgia. Stiles was it, Derek had known and Braeden had had known but Derek hadn’t gone and Stiles and Derek lasted a few years before Stiles had gotten tired of trying. He’d gotten tired of waiting for Derek to trust himself enough to move onto the next step.

And that was that, Derek had blamed himself and Braeden, ever the honest woman, had blamed him too. It was Derek’s fault, Stiles was the best thing that had happened to him in years and he’d given the possibility of settling down and being happy because he was too afraid to leave the territory. 

The entire reason that Derek and Braeden ended was because Derek wanted to settle down and the reason that Stiles and Derek ended was because he hadn’t wanted to settle down in Georgia. Stiles wasn’t a teenager eager to follow wherever the action was he’d grown into a man that wanted peace.

After Stiles there had been Charlotte, an older married woman that was always _this_ close to really leaving her husband, honest Derek I’m leaving John for good, and never quite getting to it. Librarian David Mulch followed after Charlotte had gone back to John for the fifth time in three years but David was no cake walk. David was mean and jealous and Derek had stayed with him way too long. Jordan was good, he was kind and gentle and sweet and...not what Derek needed or wanted and they parted ways just as it started. Awkward considering that they worked together and that they worked for Stiles father but they were professional and eventually it was okay.

After Jordan there was a slew of faceless one night stands and then nothing. Braeden thought he was punishing himself, punishing himself for Stiles and maybe he was punishing himself for Stiles and for Rowan because he never really stopped thinking about her. It was too hard to stop when he was paying the rent for the apartment in Brooklyn every month.

An empty apartment that she’d abandoned when it was clear that neither he nor Laura were ever coming back. He could kick himself for that, leaving her all by herself without a word. He wasn’t man enough to call her and end it on the phone, he wasn’t man enough to call her to tell her that her best friend was dead.

Derek was...a coward. A sniveling stupid coward.

Theres a call that comes around the ten hour mark and Derek pulls over the side of the road, the rain it hitting too hard to drive anyway and all he wants to do is not be in his own head. He reaches for the phone and doesn’t check who calls.

He should have.

’You bastard,’ Stiles seethes into the phone. ‘You have a kid?’

And Derek feels his heart fall straight through him at the venom in Stiles voice. He hadn’t left Beacon Hills for Stiles to start a family and they had broken up but now...

Now...he was leaving for a family he hadn’t even known about.

‘Stiles, I’m sorry.’

’Yeah, you’re sorry, you’re always so fucking sorry.’


	5. Derek

It wasnt that Stiles was jealous about Derek and this little girls mother. From his understanding from Scott was that this Rowan woman had been before Laura died and that Derek hadn’t known that he had a kid up until he decided to leave. It wasn’t Derek’s fault that he had a daughter but it was Derek’s fault for leaving everything for her.

If that made sense.

Derek had loved Stiles and Stiles had been under the impression, at the time when they’d still been a them, that they would work it out. So what if Derek wasn’t ready to leave Beacon Hills yet? Stiles could cope with the distance and with the surprise visits and such. But then years passed and Stiles felt himself taking root in Georgia and wishing, with all of his might that Derek would want to make roots there right along with him.

But Derek had been adamant about staying in Beacon Hills;

‘It’s my home,’ He’d said. ‘How can I leave my only home behind.’

Stiles remembers feeling particularly pathetic at that moment, years ago when their relationship ended, he remembers breathing hot rage and fire.

’I thought _I_ was your home.’ And then he’d ended it.

He wanted to settle, it was time to settle. They’d known eachother long enough there was no getting to know eachother, their pace had been glacial at best. He wanted to get married to the man he loved, he wanted to adopt kids and live in a big old house in Georgia where it was safe.

But Derek hadn’t budged on his decision he couldn’t leave his only home, that he didn’t think marriage was for him and that he didn’t want children, adopted, biological or otherwise.

And here he was, years later leaving Beacon Hills behind like an afterthought to meet a child he hadn’t known he’d had after swearing off ever wanting them, to a woman he had once wanted to marry and whose ring-yes thats right the ring Derek had thought he’d hidden well enough in the back of his closet.

”I hate you, you know that right?”

”I know.” Derek says. “I know. I deserve it.”

”You didn’t want to leave Beacon Hills for me. You didn’t want to get married or have kids and here you are. Doing exactly what I wanted you to do before you rejected me.”

” _I’m not_ -I’m going to meet her, I’m not going back to her mother and marrying her. Christ, Stiles, the woman hates me.”

”She should. You’re a hate-able person.”

He really was. Derek was stupid and selfish and mean. This was a testament to that and Stiles knows that he's being unreasonable. There is a difference in not wanting kids and not knowing you have one around. That little girl didn’t ask to be born just like her mother didn’t ask to get pregnant and then abandoned by Derek.

“I think what makes me angriest isn’t that you have a kid or that you might take up with her mother again. I think what makes me angriest is the fact that you left Beacon Hills, not for a week or a month but permanently.”

”I need to be there with her. She might be like me, Stiles, she might shift and...remember Malia? Malia hadn’t know and her mother and sister hadn’t known and then she shifts and eats them.”

”Don’t act like I don’t know that. Don’t act like that wasn’t the first thing to come to mind when Scott told me you had a kid. I mean, of course you have to be there in case she shifts early but damn it Derek. It hurts.”

”I’m sorry.”

”You’re always sorry, Derek. Always. I’m not, I’m not pining after you I’ve totally moved on but I can’t help but feel like shit about it. We could have been really happy.”

”I think about that every day. I should have left I should have tried harder for you.”

”But you didn’t. I didn’t matter as much I guess.”

Derek doesn’t deny it and Stiles isn’t as hurt about that truth. Derek did love Stiles but Derek needed Beacon Hills more than him and in the grand scheme of things Beacon Hills and his old territory was more important. Maybe he’d thought that Stiles would come back to live in his loft, never get married, never have children and just be.

Thing is Stiles wanted a family, he wanted a real relationship with someone who was willing to give him what he needed. Stiles thinks he might have found that now, it was early only a few months but the woman that he was with now was caring and strong and they had so much in common. Calling Derek was Stiles of the past raging for a conclusion to his hurt. Stiles didn’t love Derek anymore and didn’t think he really liked him as a person, not yet anyway. That might change and that might not.

”Listen, don’t fuck up.”

”I wont.”

”All you have ever done is fuck up. You have to try not to fuck up your kid. You understand? Everything that you do now is for her. Fuck how you feel, fuck being afraid of being a dad and fuck that stupid fear of putting her in danger. She’s it, you get that right? Don’t. Fuck. Up.”

Stiles hangs up the phone and it feels so fine so epically over and he lets out a sigh of relief. 

“Babe,” He hears from down stairs and he smiles.

”I’m up here!”


	6. Rowan

Lola knows what Derek looks like, Rowan had made sure to be honest with her child, she didn’t hide Derek from her. What Lola knew was that daddy had gone away before Rowan had known she was pregnant and that Rowan had not way to get a hold of him. Lola was young and wasn’t hurting without him she took in the information and nodded and then her attention was on something else. Usually on Hank or on the oranges or about adding to their garden. 

Lola looked so much like a Hale but she was an Emory through and through, her attention span was small like Rowan’s had been when she was a kid, the best way to describe Lola was dizzy, she had a dizzy and giggly and funny littler personality and nothing ever got to her, she never really cried and she hardly had a tantrum to give. 

Lola was just like Rowan but she was loud like Laura and she looked just like Derek.

”I wonder what he looks like now?” It had been years, Rowan is standing in the pharmacy trying to decide whether or not to color her hair the old familiar brown shade she used to wear when she knew Derek. “Lola, baby, should mama color her hair?”

”No.” Lola taps her lips with one finger and stares at the boxes of hair eyes, her eyes screwed. “I like mama’s hair. It has white in it it looks pretty.”

Gray hairs? Jesus Christ, Rowan felt old as she twisted a dark chocolate brown curl and catching the slivers of gray hair twisted in the curls. It did look nice, thats what Jennie and Lola said and it did bring some more...texture and brightness to her otherwise dark hair but she felt old. 

So old.

”Maybe we can go to a salon?”

”Mama, are you gonna change it?”

”Maybe just take the white out?”

Lola shook her head and just didn’t understand, she wouldn’t understand until she was in her late twenties or in her thirties and just noticing the white hairs peeking through the dark mass of black hair on her head.

Rowan thought that it was so unfair that grays looked good on men it made them look distinguished but on women, or on Rowan specifically, it made her look old.

”Mama, can I have a candy?”

”Do you have to ask?”

She picks up vitamins, some cookies and candies for Lola and some toothpaste-none of the things that she had actually wanted to pick up and she decides, screw it, she doesn’t need to color her hair. When she was young she wanted brighter brown curls, she’d felt that her natural dark brown made her look plain when she wanted to shine. That was a life time ago, she’d been young and just starting, in love and without a child.

Now her grays did made her feel old but they also made her feel accomplished, she wasnt the same person she’d been, the type of person who panicked whenever her roots began to show or the type of person who couldnt step out side without a full face of makeup and wearing expensive clothes. Rowan had grown up, her hair was dark brown curls with grays, she wore jeans and maybe too many flannel shirts and her shoes were pay less sneakers that fit well and were boring. She didn’t wear makeup apart from a tinted sunscreen and maybe a little something on her eyes. She didnt have the time to doll up how she used to and really she wonders, when she remembers the person she was before Lola, how she had ever managed to do it.

She thinks about Derek and him calling and how his voice hadn’t changed and she wonders if he looked just like he did back then. She still couldnt quite see him in her minds eye clearly she had tried so hard to forget and she can’t, when she tries, imagine him all grown up. Did he have gray hairs and laugh lines? Did he change his cologne? Was he married and did he have other kids? 

“Mama,” She feels Lola pull her out of the pharmacy and up the side walk towards Norton’s hardware. “Don’t forget the hammer.”

”Thats right, I almost forgot.”

”Aunt Jennie need it.”

* * *

“Mama almost forgot the hammer.” Lola stresses first thing once they’re back in the house and Aunt Jennie laughs as she takes the bags from Rowan. “She was taking forever at the pharmacy she wants to change her hair.”

”Oh?”

”I thought about it.” Rowan pulls lightly on Lola’s earlobe causing the bundle of energy to go running into the livingroom with a laugh. “Maybe back to the wait it was?”

”Oh I hated that.”

”I liked it.”

”Your hair was too short for your curls and the brown was too light. It looks like you had a puffy little cloud around your head.”

”It wasn’t that bad, the layers were nice and the color brought out my eyes.”

”I’m exaggerating I know. It just looked so odd on you.”

”Which is why I decided not to. Maybe I’ll go to the salon and get rid of the grays?”

”But you wont change the dark brown?”

”No, I wont.” Rowan means it, she means it because changing it is going back and Rowan doesn’t want to go back. Going back mean looking in the mirror and looking passed the laugh lines at her eyes, of seeing herself as the girl who waited. “What are we making today?”

”I was thinking of butternut squash?”

”Delicious.”

Its an hour later with the house smelling heavenly of squash and simmering extras on the stove, Lola was laying with her head against Hank’s belly fast asleep on the carpet in front of the TV. 

“Are you going to tell me about the man on the phone?” Aunt Jennie takes a seat with Rowan on the porch wing, she stares directly out in front of her, the day is drawing to a close and the air buzzed.

”It was Derek.”

”Lola’s father? Oh Lord, how did he find you?”

”Thats what I asked.” Rowan shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. I told him about Lola.”

”And he wants to meet her?”

”Of course he does. I didn’t hide her from him I just didn’t have a way to call him.”

”It happens when someone runs out on you in the middle of the night without leaving a note.” Aunt Jennie’s tone is clipped. “How’d he take it?”

”I told him and I hung up. I’m sure that he knows where we are.”

”Thats terrifying.” Aunt Jennie hugs herself. “He isn’t a dangerous man, is he?”

”No, just stupid.” 

“Well that was obvious.”


	7. Welcome to Malory

Once the air turned hot and sticky Derek rolled down his windows to welcome in the scent of damp nature, his sunglasses blocked out little of the bright sunlight and despite how quickly the car drove down the lone dirt rode into town he could hear the buzzing sound of bugs. There were smatterings of gnats on his windshield and mud caking the sides of his rover and while he might have been annoyed he wasn’t. There was something calming in the sweet damp hot air that carried the scent of grass and dirt and budding and blooming flora. He could smell the orange blossoms and magnolia and once he made it pass the welcoming sign he could smell the people.

The town proper was small and quaint like every little Christmas’s card his grandmother used to send him with cute little towns covered in snow on embossed on the thick papers and as he passed what appeared to be a YMCA he could smell heady floral perfume, the kind of overpowering scent worn by most little old ladies who giggled and giggled in the pews at church-or so he remembers, Derek hasn’t been to church since his baby brothers christening just a week before the fire and he’d skipped the funeral, too broken to cross the threshold.

Theres a line of interconnected shops on either side, Martin’s Diner, Jilly’s Hair&Nails, Brobecks Video. He parallel parks in front of Martin’s and decides to take a walk along just to stretch his legs, ignoring the people watching him, the new comer no one could quite put a face to. He imagined it was very much like Beacon Hills, where everyone knows everyone. Hell, people knew he’d been back to town just after Laura died even before he’d gotten out of the Camaro, they’d recognized him that well even in the passing car.

He isn’t surprised that Rowan chose to come back to this place, having been alone with a baby, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the City where the loneliness was heavy and the apartment was far too small for a new baby. He decides to head into Martin’s to ask for directions to the August’s Farm, he pretends, though its a little hard not to notice, how everyone seemed to take quick glances or that they’d been doing that, looking out at him from the large windows.

”Excuse me,” He says to a young waitress in her checkered uniform and cream colored apron. 

The girl turns pink upon meeting his welcoming smile and he wonders if the pink would turn red if he lowered his shades to show her his eyes, that sort of thing was common.

”Yes sir?”

”Can you tell me how to get to the August Farm?”

The poor girl stutters directions to him, take this turn take that, passed the Mullaby Mansion-you can’t miss it no sir, and he smiles small and thanks her for her help. The only person who had never shied away from his smile and turned beat red was Rowan and that was because Rowan had refused to meet his eye in the beginning.

He climbs back into his rover and drives on, he knows, of course, that there is a huge chance that Rowan will be stood outside her door waiting for him. There had been a few biddies in the diner with their phones out so most likely she’ll know he’s there waiting.

Maybe she’ll be standing there with Lola and that...that thought makes him nervous and excited and happy and sad. So many ands, he wonders how he’ll react to meeting her and wonders if she’ll like him.

Most likely not. Why should she? Derek has been gone her entire life, all she knows is her mother and who knows. Rowan might not be married but she very well could be seeing someone, someone that could have been there for Lola like a father should.

He suddenly felt inadequate and stupid because this was a situation that Derek had made for himself. Rowan is and never has been the type of woman to hide things from him, had Derek just picked up the phone and had been respectful enough of her then he would have known about Lola and could have been there for her and for Rowan.

He hadn’t allowed himself to think too much about Rowan in the way of the future for years, though he always thought of her. In the past they’d had fun, they were laid back and happy, the sex was good but the conversations better, the intimacy was off the charts and when he was with her she made him forget how miserable the world could be. Rowan had given him love and hope, the things that he so desperately wanted when he was a stupid teenager making terrible decisions out of impatience.

He was impatient with Paige, he had known her a grand total five days before he decided that she was the one, he’d taken Peter’s suggestion literally-the only way to be together forever was for Paige to be like him and he hadn’t stopped Peter from talking to Ennis. Instead of being with Paige and getting to really know her or give her the opportunity to choose he took her choice away and eventually her life with his own hands.

With Kate, he wanted to forget Paige’s dead, he wanted to forget how he was responsible for her dying and how much he missed her though he hadn’t really known anything about her at all and that had made it worse.

He’d gone to her funeral and sure, people knew that he was a boy she liked but five days doesn’t make you anything. Her friends knew there was mutual like, sure, but they hadn’t known or thought it was love.

When Derek had talked to them at Paige’s funeral he’d been flummoxed. He knew that Paige loved music and thought that she might want to take her love of music to a professional level. This was not the case. Paige had wanted to become a lawyer, just like her mother. Where Derek thought that their love was all encompassing and true and only there had been another boy about two years older than them there, Paige’s recent ex boyfriend sat at the front of the pew devastated and broken and staring at Paige’s body, unblinking and everyone around them whispering that Thomas would never recover from this.

Derek had been an outlier, a new boy Paige had mentioned to her friend in passing about her attraction. Paige had said she loved him but how much of that had been desperation, she was in so much pain and begging for it to end she might have said anything to get Derek to agree to killing her. Understanding that, how stupid and selfish and egotistical he’d been with Paige and how devastated he was had made him sloppier than he’d been and that was how he wound up with Kate.

Kate had been different, older to start, a substitute teacher in the high school who wore tight form hitting trousers and low cut blouses, whose skirts would ride up indecently while she swayed on her shapely legs in her six inch heels. It hadn’t been a secret that she had liked it when the boys looked at her and when the girls would turn away disgusted. He used to think it was jealousy, that all the girls were jealous of their sexy substitute teacher, but as an adult he understood that the girls were disgusted with her. After all what twenty five year old woman in her right mid dress like that to teach high school English? What kind of professional woman would sit on her own desk top and lazily cross her legs slow enough to maybe show a peek? 

Derek was so desperate for something new to take his mind off of Paige and so hopped up on hormones that he didn’t bat a lash at how often he bumped into Kate in town or how often she would call him after class to go over one of his papers, how she would have less buttons done up, how her lips seemed extra glossy and pink and how close her face was. How she would touch him firmly at the shoulder and at his knee. He hadn’t thought how odd it was when, after a days of flirting, she invited him to her motel room. He’d gone and let her have her way with him, the first time with her mouth and then her hands and then when she’d slept with him he’d welcomed the molten heat of her, a sensation he never forgot that now brought him such shame. 

He wanted her, he wanted her as his officially and in his stupid teenage mind he had thought that he could have her. He wasn’t human and technically he was older than her but wasn’t. He figured that if he was serious, and he had thought he was at the time, that if he presented her to his family during their reunion on the eclipse then his mother and pack would accept her and he was so desperate to keep her that he told her everything.

In retrospect, he should have found it strange, just how unsurprised she was the him and his family being supernatural, but then he was stupid back then and Kate had been lazily riding him and he hadn’t been thinking about anything at all when he told her. 

Derek had been chained to the motel bed, dizzy and drowsy on something Kate had given him, lightly poisoned with wolfsbane, when Laura found him naked in that bed, breaking down the door in a panic. She had been looking for him with Peter, Laura said. Peter had gone back to the house to evacuate it, she added a minute later.

”That woman you’ve been fucking is a hunter.” Laura had hit him, hit him so hard his ears rang and bled. “Get dressed, you stupid little shit. We have to go!”

They made it there too late. The house was already in flames and they could hear screaming. Derek thought that maybe, now that the fire had destroyed the mountain ash circle, that he could break in from the basement but when he rounded the house he could see his cousins burning, their burnt and brittle hands reaching for absolution before they finally succumbed to the fire.

Derek had given Kate a ring, he’d been proud of it really, it had been one of the old rings from the study the ones that had belonged to his great great grandmother that had been under glass. He’d given it to her to show her that he was serious and she had worn it around her neck proudly. He found that ring in the wreckage when he and Laura had gone back after the police had gotten there with the ambulances and the fire trucks. He’d found is and had held it in his hands so hard that he crushed and bent it, cutting into his fleshy palm.

Derek’s impatience had cost him Paige the first time and now had cost him and Laura of their family the second time. 

With Rowan he was taught to wait. Rowan hadn’t liked him immediately and had been clear about that, she’d thought that while he was attractive that he was still Laura’s snot nosed little brother, she thought he was weird and had honestly assumed he was mute the first three years she had known him, that how much they didn’t communicate.

When they happened it was slow, they got to know each other, Derek had to open up and was forced, for the first time, to get to know a woman he was interested with. Rowan was perfect in his eyes the way that Paige and Kate had been, she wasn’t emotionally immature and raging with hormones like Paige and she wasn’t particularly sexy and vivacious like Kate. Rowan was honest and messy, she had a way of annoyingly getting under his skin and he liked her. He liked her for the longest time and by the time he fell in love with her they’d been dating for a while, their relationship was steady and normal. Derek had never had normal before.

And he left her, when Laura went back and he felt their connection break, Derek thought that he would be keeping Rowan safe and he just left. He didn’t take her calls and when it broke his heart to see how much she was calling him he blocked her number. He thought, if she hated him then she wouldn’t look for him and if she never looked for him then she would never be in danger.

He had no idea, no clue that she would be pregnant.

”Damn.” He says passing through a long wooden gate, August Farm painted on a tall sign along the way. He sees the house in the distance and his stomach drops because he sees Rowan standing outside, arms crossed, light floral dress swaying in the hot breeze. “Damn.”

She’s still beautiful in her own way, face small and oval with a long plump mouth and deep brown eyes. Her hair is different, dark and long but still just as curly as it had ever been and he can see the light catching the grays threaded through the curls. He parks and climbs out of his car.

Was she always so small? So short?

”Derek.” She says neutrally, her voice setting him back it was still light and girlish. “I knew you’d show up eventually.”

”Glad that I couldn’t surprise you.” He says, glad that his shades are on so that he could continue his perusal of Rowan. “You look great.”

”I look tired.” She says.

”You look great.”

He wants to say beautiful, mouth watering-his eyes on on her hips, wider than they’d been before and her breasts are larger if possible and he wonders if these particular changes are due to age or having given birth years ago and the latter thought sends a charge through him. This woman was the mother of his child, she had Lola and had become a mother and she bore the obvious signs of that birth by the change in her body.

”Is she inside?”

”She is.” Rowan says. “Listen, I never kept you a secret and I never bad mouthed you.”

”You should have. I was bad.” He says. “Terrible.”

”You were young and stupid and you didn’t know. I didn’t know until I knew, you know?”

”Not really.” 

Rowan takes a deep breath and Derek doesn’t fail to notice her looking at him too, at the broadness of his shoulders to the thickness of his thighs pushing against his tight jeans and then at his beard.

He looks different, there are lines at his eyes and gray in his hair and beard, he thinks that he looks softer too despite the extra muscle. He doesn’t carry himself the way he had, he’s more relaxed.

”Can I meet her?”

”Of course you can, doofus.” Rowan walks back towards the house and Derek keeps step with her. “How long are you in town?”

”A while.”

Rowan is about to say something, maybe scathing but Derek can’t know and doesn’t care, when he steps through the threshold of this beautiful old farm house he sees and old woman and a little girl with long black hair and vibrant familiar eyes.

She looks just like him and like Laura.

”Ro,”

”I know.” She pushes him forward a bit. “Meet your kid.”


	8. Derek and Rowan

Lola was so small and light, Rowan remembers the moment they placed her baby on her bare chest, the small squalling baby screaming into her ears like bells, her damp and wrinkled body against Rowan’s breasts and had been surprised by how quickly she was able to heal. She’d felt Lola move inside of her for months, bubbly kicks and stretched inside of her belly but the moment skin touched skin everything had become real and Rowan was able to focus. Becoming a mother to a beautiful baby had made everything whole. Despite the loss of Derek and Laura and the bone chilling loneliness Rowan was able to be whole again or at the very least ignore the tiny little holes left in her heart. Leaving New York had been for the best, when she’d brought her baby home she brought her to a place where she’d been a happy little girl and Rowan imagine Lola running through grassy fields and hot summers with sweet tea on some porch swing watching the sun set orange yellow.

Rowan had given her little girl this dream and had known, the moment they’d first touched, that this is where her little girl belonged. The thought of being with Derek and the what if’s hadn’t really mattered. What if she had found Derek? Would they have shared custody? Would they have gotten back together out of necessity to raise Lola in the city?

Rowan had never intended to keep Lola a secret and honestly if given the chance she would have loved for Derek to have been in Lola’s life from the beginning, the years had passed them all by and looking at Derek’s stooped figure, on one blended knee as he introduced himself to his daughter, she feels that old ache and wishes, at least, that Derek could have known Lola when she was just beginning.

”I wonder if I’ll be a good dad.” He asks later, Lola is asleep against Hank’s belly, the sun having set hours ago and Jennie had made herself scarce with the excuse of seeing the girls in town for bingo. Derek and Rowan are sat on the porch swing, slapping away mosquitoes and drinking cold lemonade.

”If you have to ask that then theres your answer.”

”What does that mean?”

”It means that you already are a good dad.” She says. “Because you’re so afraid of being bad, because you care.”

He’s silent for a long moment, takes a drink and sighs deeply. 

“I wish I hadn’t been so stupid.”

”Laura was murdered and I guess you thought you were protecting me. I don’t know from what and I don’t want to know. It had to be in the past otherwise the moment you’d have known about Lola on the phone you’d have never come.”

He nods and Rowan lets out a sigh in relief. She doesn’t know what the danger might have been that compelled him to hurt Rowan so much or who had killed Laura but it seemed like it was all finally done. It didn’t matter, Rowan and Derek were different people and were no longer but at least Derek could be here for Lola now and maybe he and Rowan could be friends. They could have closure and move on.


	9. Lola

Lola doesn’t know what to think about Derek. She knows that he’s her dad, had smelled him walking up to the house and heard his heart beating real hard, the way her mama’s heart beats when Miss Barbra comes to the house or when Mister Mullaby yells at her on the phone and then the one time that Lola went for an adventure in the woods and mama couldn’t see her.

But Lola doesn’t say anything because the one time she did she’d been in town and a man with eyes that shined like yellow stars told her that she needed to keep that secret. She doesn’t know who the man was but he was nice and he smelled like outside and like wheat and she liked that he was like her even if he did live outside in dirty clothes. She gave him all the money in her piggy bank, a whole thirty dollars before he left town and he cried.

Anyway, Lola smelled Derek from outside and he smelled a little like her and his heart was afraid and then when he walked into the house he looked silly, because mama had to push him more inside and he was on his knees and talking to her. Lola doesn’t get nervous, she thinks its silly and especially silly when a grownup is nervous but then Derek is nervous and smells like he might cry and Lola doesn’t like that at all. Crying when you’re sad is bad, crying when you’re happy is the only kind of crying that shes okay with, like on Christmas or on her birthday.

“Are we super hero’s?” 

She asks Derek when her mother and Aunt Jennie are in he kitchen talking about Derek and where he’d been and why he was back, Lola’s learned to pretend like she doesn’t know all of their secrets when they’re trying to whisper. It never works in their house with its thin walls and Lola’s super hearing. 

Derek sort of looks at her and he looks funny, sat on the floor cross legged with Hank flung over asleep over his thighs, Derek’s big eyebrows go up and he doesn’t say anything for a little while.

”No.” He says. “We’re just different, thats all.”

”Is that bad?”

She asks because the man who lived in the woods who was like her told her to keep it secret and taught her how before he ran away and the way he’d said it was like she needed to keep it secret from even mama. He told her how to pretend to be like everybody else to; “be safe.” He had said. “You need to keep it secret to be safe.”

So for a while she thought that she was in trouble because she was different from mama and everybody else, she was afraid because when the man ran away a big truck came into town showing off his picture and he looked real different in the picture but his eyes were still sad and the same. But the man wasn’t bad he was just like Lola and Lola had been so afraid that she pretended to be sick and didn’t leave the house till the smell of sour flowers and mean sweat was finally gone.

She says this to Derek, he goes pale and worried and then he takes a shaky breath and tells her to come closer.

”You’re so smart.” He says like its amazing. His hands are real warm on her small shoulders and his eyes are pretty just like hers and Lola is amazed by all the tiny stars she sees in them, excited because she has eyes just like that and her mama never told her that her eyes were like the sky at night. “You did well, very very well.”

”Those were bad people.”

It looks like it hurts him to be honest and Lola feels bad about that but then she remembers her friend and the piggy bank she’d given him and how sad and grateful he was and it occurs to her that he didn’t live outside because he liked it but because he was running away. She hopes that he’s okay. He was different like her and like Derek and Derek was scared because of the truck people.

”Yes.” He says in a low whisper. “Yes they are.”

”They’re gone now.”

”Yes they are.” Derek’s thumb sweeps across her shoulder a little bit. “Your friend was right to tell you what to do, but theres more that I can teach you.”

”There is?”

”Yes.” He says in wonder and Lola sees that he’s still scared but a little happy too, when she asks about more to learn and she likes that he looks happy. He’s got lots of lines on his face by his eyes and his beard looks so soft, like a bear, so she touches it and he leans into it the same way Hank leans into her hands and he smiles with big teeth. “I can teach you everything.”

”Because I’m like you?”

”Because you’re like me.”

When mama and Aunt Jennie come out of the kitchen they don’t say a word about Derek and Lola staring silently out the window, they think that Lola is strange every day and mama laughs and whispers that Lola gets her strangeness from Derek and Aunt Jennie laughs. 

Lola would laugh about that but she’s too busy listening, the way Derek had told her how, staring out the window into the grassy fields by the woods, for the sounds of boars and rabbits and birds.


End file.
